[UPDATED:] More evidence of anti-labor Tea Party dirty tricks (this time in California)

First, they hijacked SEIU’s telephone system to try to make pro-SB5 calls to State Senators in Ohio, even though they lived out of State. We’ve seen an influx of out-of-State Tea Party hacks here posing as if they’re Ohioans until we’ve had to call them out on this.

Here is what I am doing in Sacramento, where they are holding a 5:30 PM event this coming Tuesday: (1) I signed up as an organizer (2) with any luck they will contact me and I will have an “in” (3) in or not I will be there and am asking as many other people as can get there to come with, all of us in SEIU shirts (those who don’t have them we can possibly buy some from vendors likely to be there) (4) we are going to target the many TV cameras and reporters looking for comments from the members there (5) we will approach the cameras to make good pictures… signs under our shirts that say things like “screw the taxpayer!” and “you OWE me!” to be pulled out for the camera (timing is important because the signs will be taken away from us) (6) we will echo those slogans in angry sounding tones to the cameras and the reporters. (7) if I do get the ‘in’ I am going to do my darnedest to get podium access and take the mic to do that rant from there…with any luck and if I can manage the moments to build up to it, I can probably get a cheer out of the crowd for something extreme.

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Several Tea Party chapters around the country are planning to join with me, if you are a member of one in your area please contact them for details. If they are not participating get them to!

Chances are that because I am publishing this they’ll catch wind, but it is worth the chance if you take it upon yourself to act…there’s only one of me but there are millions of you and I know that you CAN do this!

Our goal is to make the gathering look as greedy and goonish as we know that it is, ding their credibility with the media and exploit the lazy reporters who just want dramatic shots and outrageous quotes for headlines. Even if it becomes known that we are plants the quotes and pictures will linger as defacto truth.

Disgusting. And don’t think for a moment that with Fox News spending all day in Columbus on Tuesday that they aren’t planning any similar dirty trick here. Be on the look out for sockpuppets and astroturfers on Tuesday… or better yet, get your butt to the Statehouse and shown them what a genuine supporter of the middle class sounds like! As far as I can see, it looks like the Tea Party folks aren’t planning to be there on Tuesday, but you never know. They may just not be visibly talking about it on their websites. We cannot get complacent.

What this tells me is that the Tea Party has given up trying to make it appear that the public at large supports bills like SB 5, and are now reduced to trying to figure out the way to discredit and harm the support the unions are getting nationally.

They offered free bus rides to anyone in their group who could go on Thursday, and the best they could get was roughly 100 folks to show up.

They had boxes of T-shirts to hand out with nobody to wear them. Witnesses told us they were practically tossing them to anyone who’d promise to just wear it that day. They set buses up throughout the State. Virtually nobody got on board. Why? Because plenty of Tea Party activitsts, the true one down at the grassroots level have a lot of people who just happen to belong to a public union.

This publicity is as good as Christina Aguilera’s at the national anthem. As in: NOT GOOD. Good luck, train wreck. It would be a lot more pathetic if you actually believed the madness you spouted out of your face, but I can’t possibly believe you do, so I’ll settle with contempt.

I wouldn’t be too worried. I find it hard to believe some tea party moron could pull this off.

It kind of reminds me of those movies where the guy dresses up like an office worker and sneaks into an office (or like a doctor and sneaks into a hospital, etc.) and none of the people who have worked together in the office for 20 years seems to notice that some random guy is suddenly asking them a lot of questions about their passwords.

The fact is: SEIU people know each other. Firefighters know each other. And when some random, chubby-faced, pink-cheeked, Mark-Williams-looking white dude shows up in a suit and asks for a t-shirt or the microphone he will see how poorly thought out his plan actually was.

How typical. The teabaggers are against anything that helps working-class people. Maybe their AstroTurf minions are starting to get desperate.

Anonymous

There is a definite break between the self-professed “leaders” of the Tea Party movement and most of the rank and file, grassroots members. But, officially, the Tea Party movement in Ohio supports SB 5. They’ve organized rallies in favor of it and have provided proponent testimony to it. And this post is entirely factual.